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NEW PERSPECTIVES IN RELATIONSHIP MARKETINGCONCEPTUALIZATION

Daniel Adrian GÂRDAN, Lecturer Ph.D. studentFaculty of Marketing and International Affaires

Spiru Haret Universitydanielgardan@yahoo.com

Abstract

Relationship marketing represents a concept that has been disputed inthe last 15 years as being a true paradigm of marketing thinking, or just a newmethod to apply marketing techniques to the new requirements andtransformations into the socio-economic field of contemporary economy.Developing the conceptualization of relationship marketing has involved awide area of research both in the theoretical and practical background. Butdespite many controversies about how to apply relationship marketing, at aprofound level, the openness to new modalities for managing relationshipswith consumers, in the context of developing a new type of consumer – thepostmodern consumer – is one of the undeniable strengths of relationshipmarketing.

The present article is trying to capture some of the possible directions ofdevelopment of relationship marketing techniques considered by the author asbeing a kind of future trends of this complex scientific approach. In a brief weconsider as appropriate for companies in the consumer markets to developrelationship marketing strategies around the concept of “consumer personalbrands basket”. Considering this, every company should try to put togetherstrategic resources and develop common activities with other producers fromthe brands basket for a certain consumer. Due to the technologicaldevelopment and diminishing costs for management of large and complexconsumer databases, developing such a strategic orientation could be not onlyan illusion but a simple solution for consumers and tomorrow’s competitiveenvironment.

Keywords: relationship marketing, postmodern consumer, strategicpartnerships, consumer brands basket

JEL classification: D11, M31

Introduction

Our century has been a period characterized by a multitude of theories andcontroversial attempts to deepen, and sometimes change very broad concepts thatdefine the science of marketing. Among these tryouts, a special place is held bymarketing theory regarding relationship marketing. Despite different opinions

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regarding the role of relationship marketing, its valences in relation to marketing ingeneral, we consider this concept far from reaching its full potential. Thetechnological advances in IT industry and telecommunications industry boost thecontinuous process of evolving techniques applied in the field of relationshipmarketing, in the same time the initial concepts and their practical application havebeen refined and enriched with new valences adapted to the more demandingmarketing environment of the companies.

In the next pages we will study these particularities of marketing environmentespecially from the point of view of consumer markets and by extension we willtake a closer look at the relationship marketing techniques and related concepts thathelp specialists to deal with these changes.

Literature review

As we regard the scientific literature concerning relationship marketing, itbecomes visible a certain evolution at the level of relationships and generaloverview conceptualization.

In the early years of evolving theory in the field of relationship marketing,the main theme was that relationship marketing is concerning only the “supplier –customer dyad” (Berry, 1983, p. 25) being defined as developing, attracting andmaintaining customer relationship. Thus, only the relationship between buyer andseller was in the foreground.

Latter, authors like Buttle and Gummensson considered that the scope ofrelationship marketing is not limited to the above “dyad” but has to be extended toall relationships, network and interactions that may appear in the commercialactivity of the organizations (Buttle, 1996; Gummensson, 1999). Thus, theconceptualization of relationship marketing was near to a more current one – “allmarketing activities directed towards establishing, developing and maintainingsuccessful relational exchanges” (Hunt S.D., Morgan R.M., 1994).

Gradually, conception of relationship marketing become clearer orientedtoward the idea that beside a focus on customer, a company should take intoaccount a diverse range of relations with suppliers, institutions, internal customers,intermediaries, etc.

A wide range of authors, naming a few like Christopher, Kotler, Millman,Doyle, Peck, and others, consider that a company has to develop long-termrelationship with all stakeholders’ categories. The relation with the suppliers onlyis important in the context but it is not the only single element that should be takeninto account strategically. It was also at this level that the approach specific torelationship marketing is different to that of traditional marketing – relationshipmarketing has the capability to deal with a multiplicity of markets. However,despite of this evolution regarding the different views embracing relationshipmarketing concept, beginning with year 2000, there is a tendency among marketingacademicians to divide into two different camps. One of them rely on a broaddefinition of relationship marketing with a narrow area of application and the other

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camp considering relationship marketing from a narrower point of view but with abroader application area (Egan, 2004, p. 251).

Thus renowned specialists such as Parvatiyar and Sheth are considering thatrelationship marketing refers only to developing activities and programs only incooperation with immediate and end-user customers, not with a broad area ofstakeholders. They put the emphasis on focusing on customer relationships and theprocess of making them loyal (Parvatiyar, A., Sheth, J.N., 2000).

On the other hand, there are also specialists that consider as a vital condition,the management of relationships with relevant stakeholders in order for theorganizations to optimize relationships with customers (Payne et al, 2005; Maxim,2009).

An interesting point of view is presented by Christian Grönroos, in his bookService Management and Marketing (Grönroos, 2007), who believes thatcustomers may have different degrees of transactional or relational approach –namely: transactional mode, active relational mode and passive relational mode.According to these guidelines, customers will have only a transactional behavior,focusing on individualized transaction in time and space, or a relational-likebehavior, either active or passive. In our opinion we presume that the mechanismcould manifest in two different ways at the level of business customers andindividual consumers.

Thereby for business type customers the different approach could be relatedwith a number of factors including: the strategic importance of the buying, thefrequency associated with the consumption occasion, the seller relations history,etc. At the level of individual type customers we presume that the aboveorientations are possible in the context of brands that are not included in the usuallycustomer’s evoked set of brands.

Taking into consideration the above Grönroos vision is possible that a certaincompany has a transactional approach adapted for certain segments of consumersand a relational approach adapted for other segments that require special relationalstrategies in order to ensure long-term efficiency for the organization.

Therefore, even if there are still controversies about the specific relationsbetween relationship marketing and classical marketing, we may say that thewatchword in contemporary marketing approach should be flexibility… and moreflexibility.

The main assumptions

Despite the contradictory evolution of the theory regarding relationshipmarketing approach, marketing techniques based upon the concepts revealed bythis evolution are more suited in the present for dealing with postmodernconsumers.

The nowadays consumers have been characterized by many specialists fromdifferent backgrounds – sociologists, psychologists, economists, philosophers, andoff course marketers being a “postmodern consumer”, a kind of consumerpersonality different in a tremendous manner from earlier consumer generations.

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All the rapid changing factors concerning the economic and socialenvironment from the last twenty years have aggregated in the present time a majorshift at the very core of social-inter human relations and of course – consumptionpatterns.

The postmodernism concept refers to an esthetic movement, like a culturalrevolution following naturally to the modern period – up in the early ‘80. Similar tothis concept with antecedents in the cultural space, it has been developed anotherone referring to post-modernity, linked to the substantial changes in the economicfield like globalization and development of multinationals, new models ofconsumption and production.

Being integrated into such a universe, the postmodern consumer representsalso an ever-changing reality, connected to all these processes into the economic,social, cultural, technological, ideological field.

In the era of postmodernism, the watchwords have become: individuality,instability and fluidity. Post-modernity represents not rules but choices, differentstyles, the process that presumes consuming any product from anywhere by anyconsumer, anytime.

Thus, many authors considered the postmodern period, a period ofreevaluation for marketing theory and practice. Firat A.F. and Venkatesh A.proposed a series of characteristics for postmodern marketing, as: hyper-reality,fragmentation, inversed production and consumption, decentralized subjects andjuxtaposition of opposites (Firat A.F., Venkatesh A., 2005).

Starting from these elements, we may consider that the portrait forpostmodern consumer can be synthesized based on the following considerations:

A. The consumers are connected to a hyper-reality, which presumes anextension for classical services and products in a virtual space. From this point ofview – the consumption itself of the “virtual” products presumes different reportsat the level of consumer psychic from classical products, the entire consumptionact being modeled differently

B. Postmodern consumer is characterized by an exaggerated dynamic ofshifting from one consumption experience to another. The changing speed ofconsumption sources is also determined by different lifestyles, by behaviorscorresponding to “social roles” which the current consumer takes them frantically.Each consumer represents in the same time a collection of selves – each of him orher with his/her own preferred brands range. More than that, these social roles areinterchangeable and are assumed sequentially by the consumers without apredetermined model.

C. The postmodern consumer is not loyal anymore to the brands of productsand services, but rather he is loyal to the images and symbols, and more than that –to those symbols which themselves they create in relationships with brands inquestion. So, the consumers loyalty is changing at the same time with the symbolschange and their interpretation.

D. Unlike the modern consumer, which it was a precisely defined consumerby variables like: occupation, social class, postal code, personality, etc., thepostmodern consumer “escapes” all attempts of categorization because of its

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characteristics listed above. The postmodern consumer holds a diverse range ofpurchasing behaviors that perpetual change, also he becomes a marketing mini-specialist, learning to use in his own interest, promotional mechanisms and diversemarketing levers.

E. The postmodern consumer may answer positively to marketingapproaches exceeding the old classical orientation based on targeting andpositioning. These steps will be based on unconventional methods that leave spacefor the consumer’s creativity, subtle promotional techniques which don’temphasize obvious messages anymore. Unexpected associations between extremes,surprising combinations are elements that are part of everyday cultural language ofpostmodern consumer.

In a synthetic way, specialists speak of a true “post-shopper” (Baker, 2003, p.28), this sophisticated buyer with a purchasing behavior characterized by anxietyand multiple roles.

In this context, the characteristics of postmodern consumer make him adifficult target for classical marketing techniques, and it becomes obvious that ifwe try to make a parallel between the postmodern consumer and the requirementsfor an effective marketing system, the discussion should start with some of thelatest findings regarding efficiency of marketing techniques being integrated into arelationship marketing orientation and aimed to develop and maintain customerloyalty through managing long-term relationships.

As a base for our future below considerations, we find appropriate to startwith the techniques related to the concept of one-to-one marketing. One-to-onemarketing refers to marketing strategies applied directly to a specific consumer.The specific preferences for a consumer allow companies to develop an entireprocess for creating products or services with a high degree of customization. Theprocess of implementing a marketing strategy related with the one-to-one approachshould have four steps taking into account the opinion of specialists (Peppers,Rogers, Dorf, 1999): identify the customers, differentiate, interacting andcustomize.

First step, identifying the company’s customers consists in contacting a largepart of the customers and building a database created taking into account as muchinformation as possible related to the buying and consumption habits, preferencesand needs.

The second step concerns the differentiation among customers, having asprinciples criteria the level of customer value and type of needs.

Thirdly the company should interact with customers using the most efficientchannels from the perspective of costs and time consuming activities. Also animportant characteristic is related to the constancy of interactions, and developing asense of continuity for the customer. Every effort of interaction should continuenaturally the communication point established earlier.

The last step is considered the customization, involving the masscustomization for a manufactured product or personalization of some servicesaround the particular product. This final step is directly correlated with the threesteps ahead, because the efficiency of a truly customized offer depends on the

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information about customers, the differentiation criteria and the constantinteraction.

Although the one-to-one marketing seems to be impossible to implement atthe level of some companies, the integration of its principles, at least at a minorlevel – sale force department, call center, etc., can be very effective in terms ofbenefits. One-to-one approach raises the problem of strategic resources allocation.What is the business unit that is “in touch” with the customers and is more likely tohave results after implementing a one-to-one program? Despite this we maypresume that, as other authors conclude, one-to-one marketing based on behavior ismore profitable in marketing campaigns (Rodriguez et all, 2012). This means insimple terms that a campaign built on one-to-one marketing principles can be moreeffective than a classical approach. The promotional objectives, whatever theircomplexity, can be more reachable if messages are personalized, channels andcontinuity of marketing communication is taking account of the value ofcustomers, their capacity for response and involvement.

Related with the concept of one-to-one marketing, and other relevantmarketing approaches tributaries of relationship marketing, the segmentation ofcustomers can become more efficient when marketers are using the value-basedsystem that is defining for the customer’s lifestyle and conceptions. This system isbetter to be described using ontologies.

The term ontology, which can be considered as being a taxonomy of termshierarchically organized having in the same time transversal relations among them,is suited for analyzing the complex range of dynamic elements which reflects theconstellation of customer’s personality.

Having a development for web semantic and complex methods ofsegmentation also conduct to the conclusion that “with the growth of marketingdatabases and the Internet, the ability to reach customers individually became aviable strategy for a wide range of firms including consumer products companies”(Sorce, P., 2002).

In the present there are companies that take a step further in adaptinginformation technology and internet capabilities in order to provide services relatedwith personalized relationship marketing strategies.

Such companies believe that they can make the relationship marketingapproach more effective by incorporating real time personalization (RTP) inorganization communications so that there is a much higher degree of relevanceand customization based on the customers history and preferences.

In this way, relationship marketing becomes a continuous process that isbased on ongoing analysis to determine customer feedback levels, identify trendsand create communications, offer opportunities in real time.

For achieving such goals, there are available technology based relationshipmarketing instruments like: cross media capabilities, personal URL’s, landingwebpages, personalized email engines, personalized sms/mms.

Using a cross media campaign, a company has the capability to obtain andintegrate data about customers and develop and implement a kind of direct

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marketing campaign which is synchronized across multiple communicationchannels.

Our generic investigation about the present relationship marketingcapabilities and concrete evolution show in a clear manner that the concept is farfrom losing its capacity to deal with nowadays marketing environmentrequirements. Thus the technological evolution and IT instruments brieflydescribed above in conjunction with the development of social networks are only atthe beginning of their full potential development.

Our assumption is that relationship marketing techniques are on the verge tosuffer a qualitative jump, and maybe even the relationship marketing paradigm isabout to change.

The pressure of postmodern consumer characteristics, the more and moredynamic evolution of world global economy, even the crisis phenomenon, may bethe “catalyst” needed for such an evolutionary change.

We propose only at the level of theoretical suppositions a scenario for thenext big “change” in relationship marketing conceptualization. Thus, it may bepossible soon for different companies that are in forefront of relationshipprogrammers to take a step further and research for the consumers’ usual brandsbasket. The brands basket we may take into consideration as being represented bythe main brands that a particular consumer is loyal to, and take part in his usualbuying decision process for a particular long period of time. A company that hasthe logistics and the motivation to take a step further in its own relationshipmarketing strategy could investigate this brand basket for the most valuablecustomers and develop a particular type of relationships with the other brands fromthe consumer basket. The company may initiate a specific dialog with the potentialpartners and motivate them to put together strategic resources such as – sellingpersonnel, databases, marketing communication logistics, etc. in order to create akind of common relationship strategy for the entire consumer brands basket.

The goal should be defining more deeply the consumer personality, thecomplex relationships that can be established between different consuming actscorresponding to different products and/or services. We consider that thepostmodern consumer, the consumer of today and tomorrow is indeed a personwith many self-assuming roles and a complex interaction with others’ consumingbehavior. Developing such a relationship strategy that offers for the consumer thepossibility to know himself better and to interact at an unprecedented level untilnow with other similar “personalities” could be the peak of marketing drivenbusiness philosophy.

Conclusions

Analyzing the very evolution of relationship marketing conceptualization,and even the stages of marketing as a body of knowledge, we have identified aseries of characteristics and trends. Taking into account the growth of internet, thestructural changes at the level of internet usability and conceptualization degree ofthe online mass communication paradigm (evolution briefly suggested by the

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phrases: web 1.0 – web 2.0 – web 3.0), also the evolution of mobile platforms, thenature of relationships that are the core of relationship marketing has a continuousevolution and dynamic. Thus it becomes a reality and at the same time a necessity,managing relationships with customers that goes beyond simple collection ofdemographic and customer service data.

The level of technology capabilities and their level of acceptance by theconsumers has led to a solid ground for mass customization and synergy ofdifferent producers catalyzed by consumer personality.

The concept of consumer brands basket proposed above tries to capture thepossibility to define a new level of strategic partnership between brands whichapparently have nothing in common, but the value and the meaning that consumersthemselves give them.

The complexity of such a demarche is obvious even for larger companies likeApple, or Dell, and so on, companies well-known for their innovative marketingtechniques.

Also the implications at the business units and decisional structures representa large field of investigation.

Future research from different perspectives (managerial one, operational one,customer one, etc.) may polish up and crystallize better the scenario of relationshipmarketing techniques conceptualization portrayed in the present article. The authorexpresses his reservations about the development and its application in the absenceof adequate cross-section research.

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